I’m trying to determine whether or not my water has chloramines and if I need to treat it with campden tablets. I have included 3 links that show the water report from my city.
You might call them and just ask them (I saw the phone number up to the upper left corner). You could try test strips: My understanding is that you must have a test strip that can read both “free” and “total” chlorine. The free chlorine test will only test for chlorine in the water but the total chlorine will read if the chlorine is bound with ammonia (chloramines).
Does your water still smell like disinfectant after setting out all night in an open container? If it does you need campden.
I contacted my local water department and asked. They were very helpful - YMMV. The testing facility may not know as they are not testing for those compounds.
Call your Water Department. The type of testing you have appears to be of the quarterly or annual compliance test kind, which says nothing about the amount of disinfectant in your water.
If you’re in the US, municipal water systems have to have a disinfectant in the water. Plan on using the campden.
A swimming pool chlorine test kit (the one where you add drops that turn yellow) are suitable for determining if your treatment got rid of all the chlorine or chloramines.
So my city uses sodium hypochlorite. Do I need to use campden or will that boil off?
That’s chlorine, so it will boil off. But do it before you brew. If you assume your boil for the brew will do it, it will be too late at that point.
Using hypochlorite does not preclude the presence of chloramines. Some of water supplies have nitrogenous compounds in them and they will form chloramines. Using Campden is still a better option than preboiling.
I’ve never seen that before - really good to know. Thanks for posting.
Martin, are you referring to nitrogenous compounds being in the source water or added by the water supplier? Inquiring minds want to know.
Do you still recommend Campden even though the nitrite, nitrate and nitrite + nitrite results are non-detect?
I find that filling my hot liquor tank the night before brewing with the lid off and heating the water to mash in and sparge temperatures again with the lid off is enough to drive off chlorine. Boiling isn’t necessary. YMMV.
Good 'ol carbon filtering. The same thing i do for my espresso in the morning. For coffee I run though a Brita carbon filter then the filter through the espresso machine. For water I run through two daisy chained carbon “whole house filters” slowly (not even a gallon a minute). The water for beer reads “zero” on test strips. I’ve never tested the water in the coffee, except for taste. And when the Brita filter needs changed on the coffee end I can taste it.
Just use Campden then don’t worry about it. I keep a 5-gallon jug filled with Campdenated tap water at all times (and if I brewed bigger batches, I’d keep 10 or 15 gallons). When it’s emptied, I fill it back up and add 1/2 crushed Campden tablet. Cheap ‘n’ easy. The reaction is said to be instantaneous, but I figure it’s easier to just have it all ready for next time.
There’s nothing in the report links you provided that addresses your question.
If you want to get a carbon filter to address the chlorine, give us a call and we can spec the correct carbon filter based upon how fast you want to allow water to flow through. Faster flow = bigger (or more) filters.
Russ
Like majorvices, I use an in-line carbon filter for all my brewing water. Easy.
I see people using 10" x 2.5" carbon blocks fed by a garden hose, and it makes me cringe.
A 10" x 2.5" carbon block typically has a max flow of 1 gpm, so we typically recommend people go with half of that, or 0.5 gpm.
Garden hose flow is typically about 5 gpm - 10x the desired. When you push water through the carbon faster than it can be treated, you’ll have chlorine in the treated water.
I rarely see mention of flow rates through carbon in the brewing forums.
Russ
I’m surprised that you can keep a jug of water permanently without having a problem with it. I once had a nasty bacteria build-up in my swamp cooler. (Now I add bleach every few days.) Apparently, keeping everything “brewing clean” makes the difference. Does it stay pure enough to use on the cold side, without boiling?
That last sentence makes an important point.